


Home

by missharleyquinn



Category: The Hobbit (2012), The Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Adventure, F/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-02-01
Updated: 2014-04-11
Packaged: 2017-11-27 18:58:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 8,441
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/665343
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/missharleyquinn/pseuds/missharleyquinn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This story follows moments in the life of Evangeline Took as her life irrevocably entwines with that of Thorin Oakenshield. Romance. Pre-Quest for Erebor. Quite shameless. Thorin Oakenshield / OC (a hobbit).</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. A Long Line of Adventurers

Evangeline Took had come from a long line of adventurers. Her father and his father before him had both ventured out of the Shire, fighting alongside men and elves alike. For small, simple creatures (as hobbits are), they were marked as queer by the other Shirefolk, but no one could deny the bravery of the Took clan. The stories and treasures they brought home with them were enough to stun the whole of the Shire, even though they tried to keep them as whispers between friends in taverns and the swords and shields and armor stayed quietly locked away within their holes. Even so, gossip spread faster than the summer breeze in, and Evangeline’s parents were always given a heavy eye by the rest of the more respectable folk of Hobbiton nearby. 

Her grandfather had gone on many adventures, and his son Fellin was eager to continue on in his footsteps. He had married within the Shire, a gentle hobbit named Marigold who was not interested in adventuring but had fallen hopelessly in love with him. He had already begun his exploring and questing by the time Evie was born, and, by way of necessity, her mother had become a healer. Marigold taught her daughter all the tricks of her trade- how to bandage a wound, what herbs to mix to create the best and most potent salves and cures… Evie learned fast, and was given much practice by way of her father often returning to the Shire in sharp need of medical attention. She vividly remembered listening to his incredible stories- staying up late at night, sitting eagerly by the firelight, bundled up in a special woven blanket from Gondor he had received as a present… He would lean back in is arm chair, nursing whichever bone he had broken on his latest adventure, and his deep, rumbling voice would fill the small hobbit hole. Her mother would always tut disapprovingly in the doorframe, but Evie noticed she always stayed and listened to the whole tale before going to get more bandages or attend to dinner. 

Evangeline cherished every object her father returned with as a gift for his wide eyed daughter. Her treasures, she called them, even though they were often mismatched objects or things he picked up along the path of his journeys. A stone from the Great River, a pressed flower from the edges of the Greenwood, a carved wooden horse from Rohan… She kept them all in a small box, a reminder of all her father had accomplished and a promise for the future. Her favorite treasure, one her father had given to her when she turned fifteen, was not from one of his expeditions, but one of his father’s. It was a very special necklace- Grandfather Took had gotten it for his wife from the city of Dale, nestled in the mountainside right next to the Lonely Mountain and the Dwarf Kingdom of Erebor. It was a golden necklace with a small opal charm, made by the dwarves who lived in the mountain. Evie was fascinated by the idea- by the dwarves who lived in holes in the ground just as hobbits did, yet seemed so foreign and alien to Shire nature- their love of gold, their large, cold tunnels absent all the comforts of hobbit holes… She didn’t quite understand the descriptions her father shared with her, as much as he tried to explain the glittering halls and the mountains full of gems. It was all too immense for a Shireling to understand. He promised he would take her with him some day on an adventure of her own, although her mother refused to hear of anything of that nature. 

The necklace was particularly important because of its significance to the family. It had come with a letter, addressed from Grandfather Took to his lovely wife, Piper, lamenting their extended parting and promising he would return home as soon as he could. He described the city of Dale and its colorful, flourishing markets, his short time within the halls of Erebor, paying homage to the great King Thrór and his awe at the immense caverns they had built into the mountain, at their riches and the brilliant Arkenstone situated above the great king’s throne. He had gotten her an opal as an homage to that magnificent gem, for to try and explain the brilliance of its color would have been impossible any other way. _The King Under the Mountain was a sight to behold, he wrote, I shall never forget my time here and the things I have seen. Of all the tales I have heard of the dwarves and their treasures, for ill or grand, Erebor is beyond my every imagining._

Her father had been out having his own adventures when his mother had received the letter. He fortuitously returned a few days after she received a second letter, a companion to the first. _Erebor has been taken by the dragon Smaug. The dwarves have abandoned it, and the city of Dale has been lost…_

Her grandfather had not escaped the desolation of Smaug. Of those who had been exploring with him, only one survived, and he promised that nothing could have escaped the inferno. The wrath of the dragon had turned stone to dust and closed a legendary page in dwarven history all in one terrifying afternoon. Dale was just a memory, haunted by the screams of women and children as they made futile attempts at escaping the violent flames and the cold talons of the dragon as it claimed their homes for its unappeasable, unanswerable rage. The men were all but destroyed, yet the dwarves fought on. They defended their mountain home, as impossible a task as it was to undertake or even conceive of. The mighty dwarves shed blood and sweat and flesh attempting to secure their fortress, but no walls could hold out against the might of a fire drake. All was lost, and what remained of Durin’s folk became drifters, bound to wander Middle Earth in search of work where they could find it, and a new home where they could make it. Led by Thorin, son of Thrain and grandson of the great king Thrór, the dwarves of Erebor were condemned to a life of vagrancy and the monumental task of rebuilding their lost kingdom. 

Grandfather Took had played his own role, however unwillingly, in that story, and his son would never forget it. The tears in his mother’s eyes as she wrapped her small hand around the opal on the necklace which had come from that now forsaken place, one of the last gifts of the mountain before it was devastated by Smaug, the sickness she suffered from, weakening her after the news her husband’s death… Whether Piper died of true grief or of plague, the Tooks would never know. It encouraged Marigold to learn her healing craft with more fervor, however, and she became well known in the Shire as the hobbit to approach for any injuries. If the gold her husband accrued on his adventures had not been enough to sustain them (it was), then her thriving business as a healer would have secured them nevertheless. It meant that Evangeline grew up in a fine smelling garden full of herbs and other natural remedies and learned much, even as a little girl, about how to heal everything from aches and pains (most of what they saw in the Shire) to missing limbs (a one-time occurrence from a visiting stranger who had heard of Marigold on his travels and had come in search of aide- it was all that was talked of in Westfarthing for a good three years). Evie was proud of her mother and her work, although nothing could compare to her father’s adventures. Even so, her grandfather’s death loomed over their family, a warning to any Took who left the warmth of his hobbit hole that dangers came in many shapes and sizes- it was not only in the wildland or in the midst of battle where one could be taken unawares, but even in the thralls of security. 

And so this was how Evangeline Took grew up. The necklace was passed down over time, although her mother never cared for it as it served as a constant reminder of the grief which could ever be her own, and the little hobbit was given the precious item at the age of fifteen. She wore it everywhere. It was her amulet of adventure, of the great unknown, of wild and beautiful things, just as much as it was a reminder of her family’s past and the price one had to pay for such boisterous freedom. She thought of the battles her father and his father had fought, of the peoples they had fought with and for… Hobbits were supposed to remain home, to cook and clean and read and do all of the comfortable things reserved for them in this world. They enjoyed their simple lives and never wished for anything more. But there was something nastily curious about the Took line which refused such complacency. Which forced its way out into the great unknown, if not just for the sake of it than for the sake of others- to secure for the rest of Middle Earth the quiet comfort of the Shire. 

_“Wasn’t that something everyone deserved? A nice, warm bed to sleep in and a place to call home?”  
_  
Her father had asked her mother these questions when they thought she was asleep. Nineteen and burning to follow him on his next adventure, she was splayed against her bedroom wall, listening around the corner to her parents arguing in the next room. Their whispers filled the entire hobbit hole, even as they tried to keep their dispute as discrete as possible.   
_  
“They deserve a home, Mary. It isn’t right that we can stay here, safe as anything, while there are people out their risking their lives-“_

_“And what about your life, Fellin!? What about my life, and your daughter’s? You know she’s not going to just sit here idly. She’ll hate me for this, and for what? So that we can already be a broken family by the time I get a letter just like your mother did?”  
_  
Evie couldn’t see it, but she was sure of the grimace on her father’s face. They rarely spoke of Grandfather Took’s passing, but it hung in the air every time they argued about Fellin leaving. Her mother wore it like a mourning shroud at each parting, as though it would always be the last. This time, however, her voice was grating and full of something far past her usual hesitation. This time there was a gravity in her words that made Evie’s heart beat loudly in her chest.  
 __  
“I have to do this, Mary. I have to. It just… It feels like the journey I’ve always meant to go on. Ever since my father died, we’ve been involved in this. It’s time to finish it.”

_“I just don’t see what business of ours it is where they live! Your father was a casualty of their greed and if you-“_

_“ And if I die…”_ he paused, swallowing. Evangeline wondered if they were close now… _“If I die, then you can say that I died bravely, fighting for something I believed in. And that’s the end of it.”_

His words were so final, so forceful, Evie cringed. Why was this journey so dangerous? What was going on out in Middle Earth that needed him so badly? For the first time in her life, the hobbit was genuinely scared that her father might not come back. That all this adventuring was too dangerous after all, that they would get a letter just as her grandmother had all those years ago (Evie hadn’t been born yet, but she had heard the story time and time again), and that all that would be left was the two of them, her and her mother- the panic rose in her chest, painful and raw, making her breath catch in her throat…. 

No. Whatever this was, she trusted in her father. Fear was something you made up in your head. That’s what he had always said- that you could control how you felt and that being brave was just conquering that fear and turning it into courage. And the best sort of courage was to fight for someone else and to help another person in need. 

 

And that was how, after many more desperate arguments and a distraught, tear-filled goodbye, despite Marigold’s will and to the shock of all Westfarthing, Fellin and Evangeline Took arrived at the Battle of Moria.


	2. Bandages for the Battleworn

Thorin, son of Thrain, stood at the edge of the medical tent, surveying the injured men who had been able to make it all the way to this place of safety, away from the chaos of the battlefield. The Battle of Azanulbizar had ended, and the plane stretching out before the gates of their city was now strewn with the dead and dying, just as this area was littered with dwarves frantically fighting to avoid such a fate. 

“Keep pressure on that for a few minutes and then bandage him up, we need to keep working as quickly as possible. I made another batch of salve, it’s right on that table over there…”

Evangeline Took, who was leading a small troupe of men and women versed in healing of various means and methods, called out orders to the others. It had been quickly proven that, despite her age, she was well accomplished in medicine, and they deferred to her knowledge and experience in mixing herbs and cures. She approached the dwarf as he entered. It took her only a moment to realize who he was, however, and she fought herself to continue approaching him rather than to flee. 

“If you would please sit down, I can tend to your wounds.”

She offered, but he shook his head. Her eyes scanned his arms, but she could barely assess his injuries under the blood obscuring them. She hoped most of it was not his, yet she could spot an open gash along his left forearm. That, at least, had to be healed.

“Please… Let me bandage your arm.” She begged him, her voice catching in the back of her throat. Evie didn’t make eye contact, she couldn’t… Her soft grey eyes were trained on the oak branch he still held as a badge of honor and at the blood soaking his left arm and his hands, anywhere but his face. She had never met any sort of royalty before, although she knew well enough to be deferential. Other men moaned nearby, the pain from their wounds outweighing their dwarvish fortitude as they lay, waiting to be attended. 

“Look to the others first. My wounds are not so severe.”

He argued, his voice deep and rumbling as though it came from the very mountain they had just fought over. She flinched at the sound, her strange fear of him rising in her throat again and obstructing her words. Closing her eyes and breathing deeply, she picked up her supplies and bit back her hesitation. You’re here for a reason, Evie. Be brave. 

“You… You are the leader of your people now. They would not see you injured. As their example, wouldn’t you have yourself healed so that the rest of the healing may begin?”

It was as if the words had come from someone else, not her. Her voice was high, much higher than usual (which made her sound like a small, fluttering creature compared to the stable tenor of his voice), but the words were clear. She caught his grin out of the corner of her eye, and it surprised her. 

“And what would a hobbit know of my people?”

He asked, and Evie had to force herself to breathe. She couldn’t do this, not now. What would her father say? Where was her father?! No, that wasn’t the right thing to think either. Just… Take care of one thing at a time. One step before another. She bid him to sit down and set down the branch, and he didn’t obey until she chanced a glance up at him and was caught in his bright blue eyes like a fly in a spider’s web. She couldn’t escape the look he gave her, the curiosity resting on the surface of deep pain and regret… As much as she knew she should look away, she couldn’t bring herself to break the sudden and strange connection. She almost jumped as the heavy oak branch fell onto the table when he dropped it, just as she had bid him. He sat down next to his adopted shield, his eyes still on her. She made a small noise in the back of her throat and looked down at his shoulder, trying to master her sudden and unexpected queasiness. 

Her fingers trembled as she tugged at the dark fabric of his tunic, stained with his blood, trying to remove it without so many words. Thorin understood, and her hands broke away from him as, with the gentle creak of leather, he detached his belt and shrugged off the tunic. His mithril armor glowed in the growing twilight, and for a moment she was dazzled by it. A prince indeed… she thought to herself. None of the other dwarves she had tended to were wearing such an item. He tried to pull it over his head, but couldn’t restrain an involuntary growl of pain. Evie forgot her fear of him and immediately went to his aide, tugging the heavy garment as he leaned forward. It was so heavy the mithril chains knocked her backwards as they slid down into her arms. Thorin fell down to her side, pulling the armor off her and casting it under the table. 

“Are you hurt?”

He asked, and she was surprised to see the genuine concern on his face. Word had already spread of his deeds on the battlefield that afternoon, his dismemberment of the Pale Orc and how he led the dwarves to victory… His every action spoke to the welfare of his people, but why bother with a little hobbit he didn’t know and didn’t seem to care to know? 

“I… I’m fine.” 

She assured him, and he stood, offering her a sturdy hand to lift her up. His hand was much larger than hers, even though he was only a foot taller. It was strong despite being covered in cuts and bleeding across the top of it. The battle had been fierce, and as much as his oaken shield had saved him, it had also left splinters in his fingers and had not always fully deflected each attack. His arms, which had not been protected by the fine mithril of his kind, had come out of the battle bloody and battered. 

“I’m supposed to be helping you, not the other way around.”

She chided him, finding her courage. A smile flickered on his lips, although the sadness in his eyes never left. He had lost his grandfather on the battlefield, a man he had been close to, by the whispers she had heard. The great Thrór. 

“Here…”

She continued, gently pulling up the thin material of his undershirt so she could see how badly his arm had been damaged. She began to tend to it, cleaning the wound and then taking some of the salve she had made earlier and spreading it on the twisted, jagged cut running across his forearm. He didn’t make any noise as she did so, while the others had hissed in pain. Even as she meticulously tugged a few stuck splinters from his arm and hand, although he flinched as any living creature would, still he made no sound. She wasn’t surprised- he had spent years pretending to be strong and bold and invincible so his people would have someone to follow, someone to believe in… Why drop the façade now? Not to say that he wasn’t just as heroic as the rumors suggested (his actions in the afternoon’s battle surely spoke for themselves), but… Evie could see the bitter sadness in his eyes, the broken hurt of a child who had just lost his hero. And that was finally something, underneath all the armor and the bravery and the majesty… That was something she could understand. 

She felt his eyes on her as she continued her work by wrapping a bandage around his bleeding forearm. She didn’t know how to react to him, to the tightness she felt in her chest as her fingers danced carefully along his skin. She had never been put so on edge before, and the hobbit couldn’t begin to explain it. Her cheeks flushed as she felt him lean towards her. 

“What is that, around your neck?”

Her large, doe eyes glanced up at him, trapped by his deep blue ones just as surely as they had been the first time. She was silent for a moment before the spell was broken and she managed to pull the opal out from beneath the cloth at the top of her dress. 

“It’s..”

She stuttered, suddenly realizing that he had recognized it from even the glimmer he had chanced of the stone. 

“An opal of Erebor.”

He breathed, his voice full of enchantment and mourning at the same time. 

“Yes…” She replied, her eyes searching his face. His expression was the perfect picture of longing, of desire and destiny all tangled up into one profound image of desperate need. 

“I heard it was beautiful…”

She shared anxiously, struck by the way he now looked off into the distance, as if he could see something she couldn’t. She then realized she had upset him and bit the inside of her mouth as she watched the muscles of his jaw tighten in reaction to her words. 

“You heard.”

The dwarf prince repeated callously, growing instantly cold. It was as if the sun had been shining warmly on her and now had passed behind a cloud, darkening her world. His mind was filled only with deadly fire and searing heat… Of trees like torches burning through the night, the only pyres their dead would be offered after their lives had been stolen along with their homeland.

“You know nothing of the dwarves, or of Erebor. Of my people and their suffering.”

His tone was unchallengeable, and yet as Evangeline loosed the cuffs around his wrists with quivering fingers and set them down on the table next to him with heavy thuds and the clinking of steel on wood, she couldn’t help but do exactly that. The look in his eyes, the bitter pride of his race and their terrible suffering… Yet that grief was not exclusive to him and she would not have him think such. She would never be able to say why she fought with him then, maybe it was fatigue or simply her mounting bravery, but she did. 

“This necklace was a present from my grandfather to my grandmother… Just after he sent it he… He was lost in the desolation of Smaug. I had not been born yet, it’s true, and I’ve never been on an adventure before, not like this… But my father swore that he would come and help the dwarves,” she paused, “Help your people take back Moria from the orcs. He knew he would most likely die in the battle, as hobbits are not fearsome warriors, but he came despite my family’s wishes. And I came with him. My name is Evangeline Took and as much as I am not a part of your people and never will be, somehow our fates are tied together… And… And I’m not sure if I lost a father today just as surely as you lost your grandfather, because I have been too busy here to go and try to find him, but every moment he does not come here I fear he must have been lost...”

She trailed off, tears filling her large grey eyes. As soon as she had begun to speak she had been unable to stop, and the words tumbled from her lips like an avalanche of painful emotion. She had tried not to think about it before, but now that she said the words, now that she heard them spoken, she was dreadfully certain her father had died on the battlefield, just as her mother had warned. The small hobbit tried to bite back her tears, but it was no use. She closed her eyes, feeling more hot tears spilling down her cheeks out of embarrassment- her fear buried under a wellspring of private agony. Here she was, crying uncontrollably in front of a dwarf prince who she could tell was already using all his strength to keep his own emotions in check. 

Thorin closed his own eyes, taking a deep breath. Perhaps it was his own shame at what he now realized was a cruel and unfounded comment (but how could he have possibly known?), or simply everything he felt after the day’s long, exhausting battle and the results of it- a victory, but at what cost? The carnage was immense, immeasurable, and he didn’t know how to pick up the pieces and start again. How to continue on…

Evangeline sputtered as she felt his hands on her face, his large, sure fingers brushing away her tears. Her breath caught in her throat as she felt him tuck a few stray blonde curls behind her ears. His touch was gentle, his cautious fingers clearing her soft skin of the melancholy badge of her sentiment. 

“I’m sorry.”

He confessed, his voice low. Evangeline looked up at him, her eyes glossed over but producing no more tears; she had been shocked out of her grief by his advance. Her clouded grey eyes met the steely blue of his and profoundly recognized the same sentiment there. The hobbit’s heart pounded in her chest almost as if it understood some secret she could not. Thorin’s large, scarred hands were slow in leaving her face, his fingertips skimming off the edge of her jawline as he inched back. 

“I know.”

She whispered, her gaze locked with his for the third time. 

It would not be the last.


	3. By The Stone of the Mountain

Evangeline Took remained in Moria for a few weeks more, tending to the injured and working to help create the healing she had mentioned before. Physically, at least. The rest was up to Thorin Oakenshield, as he had begun to be called, the dwarf prince whose legend grew each day. Evie had not spoken with him since their extraordinary exchange on the last day of the battle. They had traded glances, but never words. Just as she had predicted (it seemed the females in her family were uncanny in their foresight), she was forced to bury her father as surely as Thorin saw both his grandfather Thrór and his brother Frerin interred into the stone of the mountain, his own father at his side. She saw him through the tears clouding her eyes, standing tall with the nobility of his race, his head bent elegantly as he watched the burial.

She felt jealous and angry and bitter toward him all at once – the way he stood so still, so calm and cold… The respect she had felt for him before, when she had assumed that he didn’t want to show fear or sadness in front of his people, crumbled away in the wake of her own overwhelming grief. How did these dwarves go about their lives, showing such little emotion?! Didn’t they feel anything at all? The memory of his fingers against her skin only made her angrier, and a little frightened. She didn’t understand this warrior, this _prince_ … And maybe she wasn’t meant to. Maybe this was all very much beyond hobbits altogether. Even as she thought it, however, she looked across to where the other dwarves were tending to their dead, and it struck her that just as not all hobbits were alike (to confuse a Took and a Proudfoot would be a sour notion indeed), so were the dwarves different. For although there were many who appeared as stony and stoic as Thorin, there were also those who bent over their brothers, their friends, tears falling from their eyes into their beards in a sight that made her quake with sympathy. The lament of the dwarves touched her own despair, and she felt less alone in her grief knowing that she was not the only fatherless child to feel burning tears cascade down her face as though a relentless torrent.

Although her father had been a simple hobbit, just one more of the numberless dead, Evie had been surprised to see that he was laid to rest with a special sword of dwarven make – one which had not been his own. His daughter, honored yet rendered inconsolable by her father’s brave sacrifice, was undeniably humbled by the gesture, and astonished that the dwarves could show such grace in recognizing his support. She was also given a small token, a single ring of mithril, for her own services in healing the wounded. She had saved many dwarves’ lives during and after the battle, and they were more grateful than she had expected when all was said and done. Theirs was a quiet, arrogant thanks, but she knew it came from the heart. As much as none of the warriors she tended to had wanted to admit that they needed aid at first, especially from the likes of a hobbit, they were not too proud to acknowledge that they owed their lives to her when the wounds had begun to heal and the battle put into perspective. She received a few gifts of gratitude and even one marriage proposal, and when she was finally packed up and ready to return to the Shire, she felt a deep heaviness in her heart.

Moria was not for the dwarves of Erebor, those of Durin’s folk who would continue to wander and find a more permanent home than what the mines could afford. It was a dwarven stronghold, to be certain, but it was not theirs. The orcs still lived deep within the mines, and even Thrain’s bravery could not match the sensibility of his people – they would not fight a battle they were so sure to lose. Evie was not the only one packing and preparing to move on. She left Moria a wiser and more stalwart hobbit than she had been before, tested through the blood of the battle if not the clash of its steel. She had dealt with the massacres of war just as surely as if she had been on the battlefield itself. She cared for the warriors, injured and struggling although never able to admit it, and bolstered their spirits as well as their broken bodies. She had watched the dead burn, a terrible sight to behold, their bodies taken by the flames so bitter to their people. There were innumerable dead, too many to bury properly within the mountainside, and so the pyre served as their funereal end. It struck Evie to her core to see those fires, those mind numbingly countless fires… Something changed within her. The plight of the dwarves had always been the cause of her father, something he obsessed about little to her own knowledge (although she guessed her mother had known about this long before he had decided to go to Moria), but Fellin had shared his feelings with his daughter as they traveled to the deadly mines. She was his only heir, and he passed onto her not only a love for adventure and for placing herself in the service of others, but also an unshakable tie to the mountains so alien to her Shire home.

And so her fate was tied to that of Durin’s Folk in a peculiar and unpredictable way. Evie looked down at the mithril ring on her finger and wondered how this reality would continue to change her life – interaction with the dwarves had already ripped from her a grandfather she would never know and a father she would mourn until the day she died… What else? Where would this new fate lead her? For now she was wrapped up in it too, in the bane of her family, and as much as she wanted to deny it, she realized the legacy of the Took line in herself. This may have been her father’s final journey, but it had only been her first.


	4. More Than A Memory

Evangeline had spent her twentieth birthday at Moria, unbeknownst to anyone around her. It was not until after she had celebrated her thirty fifth birthday that next she encountered the dwarves. She was a very different hobbit, then. Stronger, wiser, and much more learned in the ways of Middle Earth. Evie had been on many more adventures, and as difficult as it always was for her to leave her mother behind, so alone in their Shire home, she couldn’t resist the pull of the Wildlands, of the cities of men and the forests of the elves… It was too hard to remain in the Shire after all she had seen. After the adrenaline rush of dealing with blood and steel and the heavy weight of time and its immediacy as she tried to rescue the lives of the dwarves at the Battle of Azanulbizar… Drinking and eating and walking and reading and all those lovely things which composed the life of a hobbit of the Shire had lost their agency over her. As much as she loved her home, the monotony of her life had become stifling; never moreso than when she looked at her father’s maps and considered all the exotic places she could travel to. Despite the mortal history of her family, she couldn’t deny who she was and as much as it made her the most scorned daughter in all of Westfarthing, her mother’s desperate pleas couldn’t rein her in.

And so, at thirty five years old, she found herself in the great city of Gondor.

 

Evie was in a company of men who had been scouting nearby territories for signs of intruders. Something foul had been going on in the hinterlands of Gondor, and the hobbit had been recruited to ride with them and discover the source of the disturbance. She was small, quick, and quiet, which was always useful for reconnaissance, especially at night when she could spy on others and appear almost invisible in the darkness, if she wished it. Hobbits were particularly good at sneaking, although Evie was not so fond of that sort of thing. She preferred the daylight to the darkness, as almost all hobbits do, but she wanted to help where she could and so she went along with them. The company was a small but merry bunch, and after their first expedition had yielded no result they returned to Minas Tirith for a few days of rest before setting off again in another direction.

Those friends Evie had were fellow adventurers, wanderers, and men for hire, therefore she remained with the four man company in most of her free time (she was the fifth member, and the only female). The hobbit had become handy with a dagger and was quicker than anyone she had so far encountered, which meant she didn’t worry about being the vulnerable member of the group – if anything attacked her or if one of her fellows discovered himself in a predatory mood, her hand would be quick to find its small but deadly weapon, always sheathed at her side or under the folds of her dress. But all in all, theirs was a happy lot, and she was enjoying their time together, wandering and hunting for the answers they were tasked with finding.

On this particular summer afternoon, the company found themselves at the local blacksmith’s. Barenir was in search of a new blade, and they had heard tell that the swords offered here were of great make. And so they collected at the open entrance, avoiding the heat of the smith, which proved especially taxing on such a warm afternoon. Despite the discomfort, they all felt the need to look over the swords for sale and see what could be forged for the right amount of coin.

As the men squabbled over which weapon appeared the most formidable and which would cut the cleanest, Evie adventured a little farther into the workshop. She heard the heavy _clank_ of a hammer striking hot steel, and was interested to see the master at work. She was learning a fair amount about swords and their make, but the process itself constantly intrigued her. The searing heat, the flames, the metal as it bent into the proper shape, directed and manipulated only with careful skill and a strong arm. It was all well beyond her to craft such an item, which was perhaps why the task held such interest to her. Besides, the men were always such a bore when they got to talking weapons for long periods of time. The hazards of such company, she supposed.

She was drifting absentmindedly toward the _clank, clink_ of the smith without direct thought or purpose. It was warm, dreadfully warm, and she had just thought of turning around and returning another day when the heat was less unbearable when she saw him. Or at least, she thought she saw him. It couldn’t really be _him_ , could it?!

Evie marched forward, her grey eyes wide with surprise. He appeared too short to be a man, certainly. But even if he was a dwarf… There was no way in all of Middle Earth that they had somehow ended up in the same shop, after all these years… Even so, the curious hobbit stepped closer and watched the taut movement of his muscular arm as the blacksmith swung his hammer with alarming force into the golden hot portion of the blade he worked on. The motion was so violent, so fierce, she was at first afraid to distract him from his task. But if it was _him_ … She was too caught up in the surprise of discovering him here, of all places, that she couldn’t resist raising her voice over the greedy crackle of the flames beside her and the ferocious clang of the hammer upon its target.

“Thorin? Thorin Oakenshield?”

She had thought of him often since they had last seen each other, since the Battle of Azanulbizar had become more and more of a memory than a reality… Yet she had never guessed in all her life that she would meet him again. The blacksmith paused in his work. He was slow in turning towards her, almost hesitant. The dwarf placed his tools on the table next to him and, finally, he looked at her. He seemed more offset than she was (for once), his sharp blue gaze full of some emotion she couldn’t recognize. He was wearing a dark green shirt, the sleeves rolled up almost to his elbows. He had soaked through it, however, and sweat decorated his face and collected in his hair. She couldn’t imagine working here for hours on end, enduring the relentless heat of the raging fire, the oppressive furnace so close and right in the middle of summer… Despite his obvious discomfort, Evie could not help but take some secret pleasure in seeing him like this, laboring like any normal man. To see him without his armor or even his mantle of nobility… The image did not strip him of honor, she doubted any force in the world could perform such a monumental task, yet it did make him seem just as mortal as the rest of them. He knew a hard day’s labor and was unafraid of such brutal toil.

Finally, Evie filled the tempestuous silence with a brief reintroduction (she doubted he would remember such a trivial detail as the name of a hobbit he had once met), her eyes searching his as if to discover some secret hidden in their depths.

“I don’t know if you remember me, my name is –”

“Evangeline.” He cut in, his voice just as deep and sonorous as she remembered. “Evangeline Took, I believe.”

She was momentarily stunned. For a split second she was right back in that medical tent at Moria, tending to his wounds and feeling hot under his gaze. She remembered his hands on her cheeks, the way he had looked at her…. But that had been a different time entirely. She had been no more than a child, and they had both been bound by their grief. Even so, she felt caught by his arresting blue eyes just as surely as she had during their first meeting. Yet she was no longer the fluttering, flustered little Shireling she had been before. She was of age now, and had taken to acting like it.

“I cannot deny my surprise at your memory. It seemed to me you do not take great notice of any who are not of your people.”

She observed, the initial shock of seeing him again wearing off as she recalled his cold words at Moria, edged in the rough manner of his kind. The image of him standing on the mountainside, his face drawn but stoic, struck her even now.

“I would not forget one who has done such a profound service for the dwarves. And your father… His sacrifice is still fresh in my mind.”

Evangeline looked away, swallowing her next breath. She felt embarrassed by him, somehow. Perhaps it was because of the very real possibility she had thought of him wrongly all these years. She assumed he had taken lightly the hobbits and their involvement in the Battle of Azanulbizar, that he was far too absorbed in his lordship over his people to think of others. A strange discomfort began to itch at her. The blonde twisted the small mithril ring around her finger, absentmindedly fiddling with her token from the great battle.

“You have taken up smithing?” She asked, although it wasn’t a true query. The answer was all too obvious, and the look in his eyes suggested that it had been the wrong question to try. “It seems you have made some very fine pieces.”

She added, hoping to relieve the tension. He accepted the compliment with a gracious nod of his head, and she could feel his eyes still on her even as she investigated the completed blades on the workbench next to him. Someone walked by them – they didn’t speak or stop and so neither dwarf nor hobbit took note of the passive intruder, save to realize that the world was still turning outside of their peculiar conversation.

“What brings a hobbit to Gondor?”

He asked, finally, and Evie was saved the trouble of thinking up a less awkward question to ask him. Every query she considered seemed to revolve around the dwarves and their search for a new homeland, and each seemed more painful than the last. She tried on a smile, her eyes meeting his again despite her rekindled fear of the paralytic nature of his gaze.

“There have been attacks on travelers at the borders of Gondor’s territory. We do not know who or what has been causing the trouble, but a group of adventurers has set out to seek the source of the disturbance. I was passing through and discovered myself to be one of them.”

She explained, feeling much more accomplished than perhaps she had a right to. Yet the smile creeping onto the dwarf prince’s lips served to abruptly knock off her shroud of self-glory.

“Adventurers…”

He mused, and Evie felt herself flush with immediate indignation, although it would have been impossible to tell, as her cheeks were already pink from the heat of the smith.

“Yes,” she fought, taking a sharp breath of frustration, “I have been on many adventures since last we met, and I find myself well received in many of the lands of Middle Earth.”

Her tiny hands balled into fists. The hobbit’s grey eyes lit up as they met the spark of joviality in his bright blue ones. One of his hands rubbed the other absentmindedly, perhaps relieving some of the strain built up in his muscles from the rigorous labor he submitted to. The blacksmith tried to conceal the grin on his face, although he nodded at her words.

“I meant no offense.”

He claimed, and the concrete tone of his voice chipped away at her anger. She breathed out through her nose, watching him as he stepped around the hot anvil which still separated them.

“Yet it is surprising to me that such a small creature as yourself could become so renowned an adventurer.”

Thorin confessed, eyes twinkling in the heat, which hung like a cloud around them. Evie was haughty in her reply, stepping forward to meet him in front of the blazing fireplace. She looked up at him, her button nose pointed proudly in the air, as she ardently contested,

“Pardon me, Master Dwarf, but you are only a few inches taller than I am. We Tooks are very large and very capable, as you should know.”

“I wouldn’t dare dispute the fact.”

He replied, his lips curling into another smile. There was something secretive about his smiles which Evie couldn’t begin to guess at. It infuriated her. This was only aggravated by the charming tone of his voice as he conceded to her, and the way the sweat glistened on his unclean brow, dirt and dust collecting on his tan skin like a badge of his toil… His sapphire eyes were striking in the refracted light of the smith, and she was captured by them for a split second – just long enough to make her slip off her high ground and tumble down to his. He was, in truth, over a foot taller than her, but the dwarf was of spectacular height for his race and the hobbit would be considered tall for her own, standing at nearly four feet. The distinction between them was not so great a thing, as far as she would admit.

“Well…”

She began, but what it was she began she hadn’t the slightest idea.

“How long are you staying in Minas Tirith?”

He asked, and she was relieved to find her footing in a clear response.

“We stay in the city for tonight and one more, then we leave to continue our search.”

“I see…” He replied, his eyes tracing the lines of her face. She was hit by the sudden, queasy sort of realization that she enjoyed the idea of his attention. Of his gaze upon her. It wasn’t right of her to think so, or to reminisce about his large, calloused fingers against the soft plains of her cheeks… She wondered if he remembered that moment as clearly as she did. He recalled her name without difficulty, which suggested that perhaps he did… The very possibility made her feel weak inside, but also encouraged the tiny, tough ball of courage in her chest to take action. Drawing in a shallow, broken breath, the hobbit threw caution to the wind (of which there was none in the oppressively hot smith), and took a daring chance.

“Would it be so very untoward for a capable, yet perhaps reckless hobbit adventurer to buy a dwarf-prince turned blacksmith a drink?”

Thorin made a noise in the back of his throat which she guessed was as close a sound to laughter as the dwarf could achieve, and it made her heart constrict in her chest. She hadn’t realized she had been holding her breath until he grinned and she felt it erupt from her chest in a sigh of pithy relief. All the discontent she had felt earlier washed into a strange comfort as she tried to commit his smile to her memory while it still lingered upon his noble countenance. He was no longer the dark, stoic mourner of her reminiscence, but someone real and relatable. Soaked in his own sweat, his long, dark hair tousled around his shoulders in knotted, slick raven strands, dirty from the smith and tired from hard labor, she finally understood him. Thorin Oakenshield, stripped of his armor and his pride, was a dwarf willing to go to great lengths for his people. One who knew sacrifice but, it appeared, was not wholly unfamiliar with how to smile. She caught herself hoping to see him smile again and reveal another small part of himself. Her desire troubled her, but all the same she could not resist its lure.

“There’s a pub not far from here and I’ve found they serve excellent mead… Although if you live here you no doubt know if it.”

She stammered, and he affirmed, his voice as deep and commanding as ever,

“The Dull Blade. I could meet you there tonight just before sundown, if you think it not _untoward_.”

He teased her, and she lacked the decency to blush. There was a noise from the front of the shop, and they heard a voice carrying over the other sounds of the smith and the snapping of the eager flames beside them.

“Evie!!! Where’d you get off to?!”

The hobbit took a breath, a soft smirk playing on her full lips.

“Who is left to judge such a thing?”

She pointed out, raising her eyebrows and stepping around the anvil to go look for her friends.

“I look forward to our next meeting, Master Dwarf.”

She regained a little of her earlier confidence as she slipped off into the steam of the smith, heading towards the entrance and her companions. Thorin did not reply, but simply watched her go, still doubting that they had spoken at all and that their encounter was not a fever dream easily blamed on the heat. All the same, as he turned back to his work and the heavy mallet struck steel once again, he couldn’t resist an amused smile. It had not been so awfully long since he had thought of the hobbit and their extraordinary meeting. _I cannot deny my surprise at your memory._ It seemed that hers was equally as sharp. He was glad to know he had lived on in her thoughts as well… For it was not simply a sharp memory which had maintained Evangeline’s name in the dwarf’s mind. How could he possibly forget her?


End file.
